Why is the proletariat so much less class-conscious now? [Archive]

Fourth Internationalist

10th July 2013, 00:19

Nominally socialist/state capitalist regimes came into existence in the name of socialism, communism, and Marxism. The bourgeoisie took advantage of the terrible conditions of those degenerated regimes (unless they were allies for a certain period of time, then they were glorified), and said "That is socialism! Capitalism may be bad, but there is no better alternative!" Pointing to Stalin, the Kims, etc. is one of the most predominant arguments against communism, no matter how flawed.

If everyday people tell you communism is bad, they mention the USSR or North Korea. The average person won't go criticise Marx's political philosophy, if they even know who he is. They don't criticise Luxemburg's views on the mass strike, or Engels on the role of the state, both of whom again they have never heard of before. Very few people object to communism in reality, meaning a classless society free from private property, because they equate communism with totalitarianism, as most nominally socialist regimes were.

CatsAttack

10th July 2013, 00:35

There are many reasons for this, sorry don't have time to list all, but an important one is there has been a tremendous rise in living standards, not just in the west, but all over the world. You got your welfare state, high pay for unskilled labour etc.

Take the Detroit autoworkers for instance, just recently a new hire was making $30 an hour. You have workers in the IT industry making six figure salaries etc.

Point is, even workers in factories are no longer tied to the factory lifestyle. They have homes in the suburbs, doctor/lawyer friends, and are married and intertwined with the petty-bourgeois lifestyle. Lot's of class mixing.

The 'working-class' as a revolutionary category is an outlived concept. It is the leaders, armed with a genuinely socialist programme, who cause social change, not the ignorant and backward 'masses' as the entire history of the last 100 years so clearly shows.

Astarte

10th July 2013, 00:36

a_wild_MAGIKARP

10th July 2013, 00:42

MarxArchist

10th July 2013, 00:48

I'm wondering, why are the workers of today seemingly much less class conscious than around..the first half of the last century, or the mid to late 1800s?

In those times it seems like there was a lot of action going on, whether it was strikes, serious protests, or even communist revolutions. Class struggle..

They were willing to fight for their rights and for a better life. Today, everyone is just so brainwashed by liberal propaganda and so conformist.. What happened?

Besides the warping of socialism by post 1917 attempts in the east, within the west Fordism had both a more centralized production process and production for utility rather than a production geared so that we would bond the product with our self image. Around the late 1940's, after WW2 and when capital began focusing on a battle with communism they facilitated a change in the market. A sort of extremely decentralized consumer society rather than a large scale, more centralized, industrial worker society.

This made the traditional work place organizing very had for two reasons, first being the more decentralized and split up the work force/people are the harder it is to form solidarity. If we have 1,000 workers in 1 factory on one side and 50 companies with 20 workers on the other which do you think would be easier to organize? The factories with 1,000 workers of course. Add to this the second dimension, the creation of a "middle class" and the sort of "individualism" via consumer culture that was attached to it. A million different distractions have been crafted. People are controlled, manipulated and lied to and on a certain level accept it because Disneyland, NIKE shoes, X-Box, Fashion, professional sports, new cars, Burger King, TV, movies and all sorts of perks the capitalist system has to offer.

You might find this documentary educational.

cW_rIdd69W8

The question is what should our reaction to this be? Third Worldism? Privilege theory as the basis of organizing? A complete rejection of the revolutionary potential of first world workers who aren't completely immiserated? David Harvey talks about the importance of struggle in less developed nations and I agree with his position but at the same time the more advanced capitalist nations are going to be the springboard to communism not the undeveloped/underdeveloped world. China, to me, after it has now fully developed under capitalism, would be a leading nation that could actually facilitate some sort of true socialism but we also need old western bloc nations to do so. This is the challenge of the next 100(?) years? As capitalism decays more and more, as profits become harder to maintain it will eat itself from within. As this happens more and more people in the advanced western nations will become, lets say, disillusioned with things. Historically speaking, this is when battles between communism and fascism have arisen and probably will in the future. Just ignoring the workers in the first world who aren't completely living in poverty will simply, in the future, give dying capitalism a larger population who will support fascism as a means to save capitalism.

a_wild_MAGIKARP

10th July 2013, 00:56

Capitalism, actually in reaction to the social revolution has somewhat learned to deliver higher living standards - this really began in earnest once the Soviet Union and the Soviet mode began to appear as a viable global alternative to traditional capitalism and imperialism - in the post WWII era history witnessed the rise of Social Democracy and various social concessions and rises in living standards generally which were one part concession to the constant struggles of socialists globally for higher living standards and two parts an effort to bolster society against Stalinism and make capitalism seem superior to Stalinism all around - combine this with the "war of position" i.e. mass and constant propaganda proclaiming capitalist and bourgeois republican superiority to "Communism" in conjunct with the never ending production of "false needs" to keep working people pre-occupied and you got a massive decline in class consciousness.

The trend has steadily started to reverse though as the Soviet Union is now no more and the reforms of the post-WWII epoch are being rapidly repealed and pulled back as they seem superfluous to the capitalist elite now that once again there is no alternative global mode around to undermine capitalism, living standards are dropping, and class consciousness is rising.
I think these living standards have a lot to do with imperialism and the even worse exploitation of poorer countries. Imagine if there weren't Chinese workers making stuff for 10 cents an hour for Western capitalists..people in the West probably wouldn't be able to afford computers then, or many electronics. Anyway, maybe as poorer countries develop and become fully bourgeois imperialist countries themselves, all workers will be more equally poor and become more class conscious... I hope.

CatsAttack

10th July 2013, 00:59

I think these living standards have a lot to do with imperialism and the even worse exploitation of poorer countries. Imagine if there weren't Chinese workers making stuff for 10 cents an hour for Western capitalists..people in the West probably wouldn't be able to afford computers then, or many electronics. Anyway, maybe as poorer countries develop and become fully bourgeois imperialist countries themselves, all workers will be more equally poor and become more class conscious... I hope.

Not hard to imagine as current Chinese manufacturing labour costs are over $4 an hour.

CatsAttack

10th July 2013, 01:08

I think these living standards have a lot to do with imperialism and the even worse exploitation of poorer countries. Imagine if there weren't Chinese workers making stuff for 10 cents an hour for Western capitalists..people in the West probably wouldn't be able to afford computers then, or many electronics. Anyway, maybe as poorer countries develop and become fully bourgeois imperialist countries themselves, all workers will be more equally poor and become more class conscious... I hope.

1. Not hard to imagine as current Chinese manufacturing labour costs are over $4 an hour.

2. Imperialism owes its existence to the existence of poor, backward countries.

Your first point is a lie, your second point is an absurdity.

Hit The North

10th July 2013, 02:16

There are many reasons for this, sorry don't have time to list all, but an important one is there has been a tremendous rise in living standards, not just in the west, but all over the world. You got your welfare state, high pay for unskilled labour etc.

Except that the decline in class consciousness in the West coincides with the decline in workers' real wage and attempts to dismantle state welfare. The generation that saw the construction of the welfare state and enjoyed real increases in income were arguably more class conscious - certainly more combative and organised in pursuance of their interests.

Point is, even workers in factories are no longer tied to the factory lifestyle. They have homes in the suburbs, doctor/lawyer friends, and are married and intertwined with the petty-bourgeois lifestyle. Lot's of class mixing.

Yes, George Bush Jnr made the point that being poor in America did not mean people couldn't enjoy the good things in life - the trick? Cheap credit! Look where that's got us!

Also, statistics for many Western societies show a decline in social mobility and a stiffening of class division in the last twenty years or so. This would mean less class intermingling, not more.

The 'working-class' as a revolutionary category is an outlived concept. It is the leaders, armed with a genuinely socialist programme, who cause social change, not the ignorant and backward 'masses' as the entire history of the last 100 years so clearly shows.

This is an indemonstrable claim and reeks of elitism and, at best, reformism. It might get you restricted to the place where the non-revolutionaries reside.

Astarte

10th July 2013, 02:27

Except that the decline in class consciousness in the West coincides with the decline in workers' real wage and attempts to dismantle state welfare. The generation that saw the construction of the welfare state and enjoyed real increases in income were arguably more class conscious - certainly more combative and organised in pursuance of their interests.

I don't doubt this was true in the UK in the post-war epoch, but in the USA it really wasn't. Sure, in the USA at that time unions were stronger and people were more apt to refer to themselves as "working class", but it wasn't due to any sort of consciousness of the working class having their own political interests separate and apart from the capitalist class the liberal bourgeoisie couldn't represent - that kind of thinking in the working class was essentially obliterated over here by the end of WWII - part of the reason, of course, also is the USA came out of WWII essentially with its infrastructure unscathed, so it got a bit of a running start into Keynesian "golden age" Leave it to Beaver style bourgeois society - really the last iteration of anything resembling class consciousness in the US main stream came from the marginalized "counter-culture" of the 1960s in the form of the "New Left" and some Civil Rights movement activists and leaders.

MarxArchist

10th July 2013, 02:53

really the last iteration of anything resembling class consciousness in the US main stream came from the marginalized "counter-culture" of the 1960s in the form of the "New Left"

Completely impossible when the New Left rejects the working class as the revolutionary agent and which is indeed why focus was placed on the civil rights struggle. Don't take this comment as me saying the civil rights struggle isn't/wasn't worth while- students (in this case Students For A Democratic Society) hooking up with the most oppressed simply ended up in those students joining the bourgeois government. Reformism. Reformisn that was needed under capitalism but not a path to communism by any means, especially when you, as a matter of foundational theory, reject the revolutionary role of the broader working class and in fact paint them out as hopelessly reactionary. If that's the case then communism is hopelessly impossible. The New Left signified a perversion of class struggle in this sense. Not only did it do that but it embraced a sort of idealist individualism, the same idealist individualism that capital manufactured in order to sterilize the working class to begin with.

Listen to this dribble from Mark Rudd

They (Marxists who saw the working class as an integral part of socialist revolution) were pushing as a strategy for SDS something called, “the Worker-Student Alliance,” which postulated that students should unite with the true revolutionary power in this country, “the workers,” in order to make the revolution. Why were they revolutionary? Because Marx had told us so back in 1848. There’s the religious aspect for you. I knew PL was just blowing wind. After being kicked out of Columbia in May, 1968, I had become a regional and national traveler for SDS, going to chapters around the country to help them get organized. I constantly spoke about the events at Columbia, how it was necessary to support black students (SDS was mostly white), how militancy and a radical analysis gained us support. I found many other non-PL SDS’ers who believed as I did, and together we formed an anti-PL faction which put forward a competing vision of revolution based on what we saw happening around us, in this country and around the world: that national liberation movements such as Vietnam’s and the black liberation movement in this country were actually leading the struggle, and that we white students should organize support for them. Fixating on “the workers” was racist in that PL didn’t want to see non-white people as the revolutionary agents.

Total nonsense. Workers of all colors are revolutionary agents. These meat cleavers simply agreed with Marcuse and have perverted class struggle in the US since (this is the first time I've ever called anyone a meat cleaver. I'm going to use that more often). Their backwards ways of organizing live on as many of the (old) New Left are cemented in the Bay Area and Occupy Oakland was a sort of extension of 1960's New Left organizing which A has ZERO potential for a mass movement and B ends up in reforms not class consciousness of any sort.

Fourth Internationalist

10th July 2013, 03:03

Yeah, that is why most people are scared of communism, but I'm not talking only about the communist movement, but just workers fighting for a better life in general, whether it be in the name of communism or liberal social democracy or whatever.

As I said capitalists would say, "That is socialism! Capitalism may be bad, but there is no better alternative!" Therefore, workers only fight for a better life within capitalism, which isn't working. But they don't see any other alternative.

CatsAttack

10th July 2013, 03:41

This is an indemonstrable claim and reeks of elitism and, at best, reformism. It might get you restricted to the place where the non-revolutionaries reside.

1. Indemonstrable? The last hundred years demonstrate quite clearly that the 'masses' are unable, due to their backwardness and ignorance, to seize power, that it is up to socialists, armed with a programme of global socialist revolution, representing the most progressive and developed layers of society, to take power. Why Bolshevism succeeded and every other 'mass' movement has lead to failure and disaster.

2. Elitism? If supporting Lenin's views on the party as the vanguard of the proletariat is elitism, then yes, by all means, I am an elitist.

3. Reformist? Don't be absurd.

4. Restricted? You wish!

Astarte

10th July 2013, 05:22

Completely impossible when the New Left rejects the working class as the revolutionary agent and which is indeed why focus was placed on the civil rights struggle. Don't take this comment as me saying the civil rights struggle isn't/wasn't worth while- students (in this case Students For A Democratic Society) hooking up with the most oppressed simply ended up in those students joining the bourgeois government. Reformism. Reformisn that was needed under capitalism but not a path to communism by any means, especially when you, as a matter of foundational theory, reject the revolutionary role of the broader working class and in fact paint them out as hopelessly reactionary. If that's the case then communism is hopelessly impossible. The New Left signified a perversion of class struggle in this sense. Not only did it do that but it embraced a sort of idealist individualism, the same idealist individualism that capital manufactured in order to sterilize the working class to begin with.

Listen to this dribble from Mark Rudd

Total nonsense. Workers of all colors are revolutionary agents. These meat cleavers simply agreed with Marcuse and have perverted class struggle in the US since (this is the first time I've ever called anyone a meat cleaver. I'm going to use that more often). Their backwards ways of organizing live on as many of the (old) New Left are cemented in the Bay Area and Occupy Oakland was a sort of extension of 1960's New Left organizing which A has ZERO potential for a mass movement and B ends up in reforms not class consciousness of any sort.

The New Left was a little too broad of a trend, with an extremely heterogeneous collection of ideologies to generalize it completely in this way ... but over all I think you are more or less correct as clearly Marxian orthodoxy didn't hold much parley in their circles - but this was actually my point all along, in the post-WWII era a working class with its own consciousness as being a political movement of and for itself as a class simply did not exist in the US to such an extent that anything even remotely resembling Marxian thought during the Cold War period in the US took on this 'liberalized' and completely defeatist (as in the case of Marcuse) form.

MarxArchist

10th July 2013, 07:05

The New Left was a little too broad of a trend, with an extremely heterogeneous collection of ideologies to generalize it completely in this way ... but over all I think you are more or less correct as clearly Marxian orthodoxy didn't hold much parley in their circles - but this was actually my point all along, in the post-WWII era a working class with its own consciousness as being a political movement of and for itself as a class simply did not exist in the US to such an extent that anything even remotely resembling Marxian thought during the Cold War period in the US took on this 'liberalized' and completely defeatist (as in the case of Marcuse) form.

Not really. SDS was pretty much the culmination of activists adapting Marcuse's theories put forth in One Dimensional Man and they led the New Left in the 1960's early 1970's in America. They were the intellectual vanguard although not in the Russian Bolshevik sense. Many of them have ended up in university positions preaching privilege theory as the basis of 'revolution' (most don't even think revolution is possible anymore, just social change via reforms). This has in turn changed their influence from being actual students in the 1960's to a sort of 'guardian of the left' position cementing their shifty theories into the lefts modern youth movements.

The entire reason they even had any modicum of success in their time was because of the Vietnam war, most notably the draft. Now they're trying to take credit for the "success" of present day "activism" when in reality it's their model that has stunted any sort of possibility of forming a mass movement, at least from actions within the left.

Jimmie Higgins

10th July 2013, 08:38

In broad strokes, I'd say the reason is that capitalism has adapted and readapted faster than working class movements have been able to respond. So on the one hand is the post-war boom coupled with Keynsian policies and Social-Dem governments which passed reforms which greatly improved the conditions for many workers and thereby gave legitamacy to post-war capitalism and reformism that didn't exist in many countries prior to the war. This allowed the capitalists to drive out union militants and to create partnerships with union beurocrats who in turn insolated their own positions as negotiators for the class by reducing democratic mechanisms in some of the unions that had been formed or reformed in periods of greater struggle and militancy. It also allowed liberal regimes to marginalize radicals and even the CPs or incoporate the CPs and Socialist Parties into the mainstream. The other side of this is the legacy of Stalinism which helped the liberals basically outflank radicalism while also the politics of Russia and lack of "socialism" that was really wasn't much different than European Social-Democracy, discreditied the ideas of revolutionary change producing a qualitativly better kind of society.

The overall effect has been the self-destruction and/or repression of actual grassroots working class political structures and often tradditions of militancy associated with them; the de-legitimization of radical ideas among workers. So as Keynsianism faded, rather than a return to militancy, the working class was confused and divided overall with some turining to right-wing populism to try and defend the gains made in the post-war by NIMBY-like excusion of other workers, others becoming underconfident and so more willing to seek bourgoise allies like the Democratic Party or whatnot. We've been disarmed organizationally and ideologically and so it is hard to muster any kind of coherent class-based defense and alternative from scratch. But the half-glass full aspect of this is that we are hopefully at a point of rebuilding and the popular protests with some inherent class-based issues involved shows that it can be possible to try and organize and rebuild something; a New New Left created outside the shaddow of the USSR and 20th centrury socialism might be able to buit on a much more solid class-basis and return to the kinds of mass working class struggles that existed in the early part of the 20th century.

Jimmie Higgins

10th July 2013, 08:52

There are many reasons for this, sorry don't have time to list all, but an important one is there has been a tremendous rise in living standards, not just in the west, but all over the world. You got your welfare state, high pay for unskilled labour etc.There's some truth to this, but overall this is far too deterministic IMO. First if you look at US history, there were periods of low struggle when wages, social wages, and overall living standards declined, and there were periods of rank and file struggle even when living standards were high. Organizing happened against the companies and business-union leaders in the 1970s, which was also the point of highest wages relative to production in US history.

So IMO, it's not the reforms and increased living standards in the abstract, so much as how this impacted the class and how it was widely interpreted. For many the post-war boom (which was not predicted really by any on the left in WWII) seemed to be a vindication of Keynsianism and the idea that capitalism could be reformed. Because the "official" left of the CPs didn't have an alternative and sought peace, any in the radical movement who tried to counter this were pretty marginal (anarchists and trotsyists mostly).

Take the Detroit autoworkers for instance, just recently a new hire was making $30 an hour. You have workers in the IT industry making six figure salaries etc.

Point is, even workers in factories are no longer tied to the factory lifestyle. They have homes in the suburbs, doctor/lawyer friends, and are married and intertwined with the petty-bourgeois lifestyle. Lot's of class mixing.
But again, this "class mixing" is not automatic. There was a sort of hegemonic battle over housing in the US after WWII - is housing a "right for workingpeople" as it was framed by labor in the late 40s, or is homeownership economic "self-reliance" and responcibility as it came to be concieved of by the 1970s. The middle class and real-estate interests were able to convince working class homeowners of their politics, but home-ownership could have alternately been a site where working class poltics, not middle class politics had a wedge. Appeals by elietes for racist arguments played a big part in winning white working class people that they should support the developers and middle class interests to "achieve mobility" by keeping other groups of workers out of the post-war housing boom.

The 'working-class' as a revolutionary category is an outlived concept. It is the leaders, armed with a genuinely socialist programme, who cause social change, not the ignorant and backward 'masses' as the entire history of the last 100 years so clearly shows.Where to start with this, though. The working class is not subjectivly revolutionary or nonrevolutionary, it can be either... objectivly the working class is a revolutionary class in that they can produce more than they need themselves and so can potentially do away with class rule. So I think the entire history of capitalism shows that it's this class who can both stop capitalist production and could actually re-direct labor efforts around a different set of class interests. A revolutionary program assumes a mass working class movement, the program itself does nothing, it is an attempt to suggest a way forward for that existing mass class movement; it's still the workers who have the power (and class interests) to implement it or not.

Workers-Control-Over-Prod

10th July 2013, 08:56

That's a complicated question to answer. Workers in the West are hardly less class "conscious", they are simply less active. Activity comes from two sources: desperation (as was the driving force at the emergence of the rotten capitalist system) as well as sociability. "Social Capital", i.e. recreational clubs, has deteriorated drastically in the West since WW2. Monopoly Capital has taken over the media, entertainment and individual-technology has exploded, all creating ever more isolated and not-socially-active Workers. Instead of playing the latest Call of Duty game, workers could use their "free time" to build solidarity and the vital class independence needed to liberate humanity from the Class system. However, worker activity in the advanced capitalist countries cannot be reduced to mere political discussion and reading groups. We Communists need to build our own instruments and "social capital" capable of competing with the capitalist feel-good instruments (video games, drugs, alcohol etc.) currently used to isolate and tie down the working class. Libraries, Beer Gardens and Shooting Ranges, not Video Games!

The Feral Underclass

10th July 2013, 13:25

Karl Marx talks about this in The German Ideology (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/) (see my signature).

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.

The Illusion of the Epoch (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm)

Capitalist ideology has succeeded in selling the ideas of the ruling class. Conditions have had the illusion of improving for many Westerners. They could buy their own house, car and go on holiday, this makes people believe they have freedom and that is what capitalist ideology promotes. As a result, people have been consumed by the spectacle of a consumerist society -- Buying stuff will set you free. These ideas have been legitimised in every walk of life and prevailed, and continue to prevail. Capitalists control the material forces in society, and therefore are able to set the agenda on ideology. In other words, capitalism has won (for now).

Jimmie Higgins

10th July 2013, 13:48

Capitalist ideology has succeeded in selling the ideas of the ruling class. Conditions have had the illusion of improving for many Westerners. They could buy their own house, car and go on holiday, this makes people believe they have freedom and that is what capitalist ideology promotes. As a result, people have been consumed by the spectacle of a consumerist society -- Buying stuff will set you free. These ideas have been legitimised in every walk of life and prevailed, and continue to prevail. Capitalists control the material forces in society, and therefore are able to set the agenda on ideology. In other words, capitalism has won (for now).

I think the idea that there is no alternative has been a much bigger impact than "consumer society" on consiousness. Lives improved for millions of rural people just by becoming a wage-worker and having access to more mobility and consumer goods in the early 20th, but the contradictions also produced push-back. The relative change from artisan production to industrial production had a big impact in regular worker's lives (pulp books, comics, movies, all sorts of consumer goods that seem small to us now, probably had a much bigger impression on people than us going from print books to digital or tapes to ipods) and yet, there was still fight back despite workers having more consumer goods.

Unlike earlier proletarians, most recent generations in the US or Europe or Japan have no real living connection to other ways of life. So combined with a void in even reformist class defenses and organization, most people have no choice but to interact with the market as an induvidual - this backs up the capitalist ideology in lived experience. It's not that they just sell us these ideas, they convince us that what's on offer, the surface atomized life, are the limits of what is possible, so we better do whatever we can to get ours induvidually. Collective and bottom-up struggle can reverse this I think and allow for an alternative to develop and be experienced... and it can happen quickly as the brief but often fast-spreading protests of certain sections of people against austerity have shown glimmers of.

TheRedRose

10th July 2013, 13:59

I beleive the class consciousness of people today is the same as it was "in the old days". Of course it varies according to material conditions.

Hit The North

10th July 2013, 14:26

I don't doubt this was true in the UK in the post-war epoch, but in the USA it really wasn't. Sure, in the USA at that time unions were stronger and people were more apt to refer to themselves as "working class", but it wasn't due to any sort of consciousness of the working class having their own political interests separate and apart from the capitalist class the liberal bourgeoisie couldn't represent - that kind of thinking in the working class was essentially obliterated over here by the end of WWII - part of the reason, of course, also is the USA came out of WWII essentially with its infrastructure unscathed, so it got a bit of a running start into Keynesian "golden age" Leave it to Beaver style bourgeois society - really the last iteration of anything resembling class consciousness in the US main stream came from the marginalized "counter-culture" of the 1960s in the form of the "New Left" and some Civil Rights movement activists and leaders.

I'll concede that I'm speaking from a specific UK context and the US context was different, particularly in its much weaker forms of mass labour organisation compared to Western Europe. But as Jimmie Higgins confirms:

Originally posted by Jimmie Higgins
First if you look at US history, there were periods of low struggle when wages, social wages, and overall living standards declined, and there were periods of rank and file struggle even when living standards were high. Organizing happened against the companies and business-union leaders in the 1970s, which was also the point of highest wages relative to production in US history.So the point I was trying to raise against CatsAttack stands. And the point is that his general argument that working class consciousness is low because workers have it too good in capitalist society is guilty of faulty causation.

1. Indemonstrable? The last hundred years demonstrate quite clearly that the 'masses' are unable, due to their backwardness and ignorance, to seize power, that it is up to socialists, armed with a programme of global socialist revolution, representing the most progressive and developed layers of society, to take power. Why Bolshevism succeeded and every other 'mass' movement has lead to failure and disaster.

As far as I'm aware, once the Russian working class was finished as a revolutionary force, due in large part to its decimation during the civil war, then so were the Bolsheviks. Unless you want to argue that what came after was a "success" for socialism.

2. Elitism? If supporting Lenin's views on the party as the vanguard of the proletariat is elitism, then yes, by all means, I am an elitist. Good luck in showing that Lenin thought the "working class as a revolutionary category is an outlived concept".

Meanwhile, if you interpret Lenin's vanguard as relating to some strata of intellectuals that can substitute themselves for the working class then you are substantially incorrect.

3. Reformist? Don't be absurd. Well, what are we to make of your position that the masses are passive and insensible and that their interests can only be realised through the conscious will of their leaders?

4. Restricted? You wish!I don't really care one way or the other, mate, and if it happens it won't be the result of my wishing. It will be because a Moderator has determined that writing off the initiative of ordinary people and calling the working class "ignorant and backward" is incompatible with a recognised revolutionary outlook.

G4b3n

10th July 2013, 15:57

For the U.S this began in the so called "progressive" era with Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy knew that the IWW was capable of stirring up some serious shit, and he didn't like that one bit. So the conservatives decided that the truly conservative thing to due was appease the workers in order to safeguard the system from bloody class struggles. The united States probably has the most violent labor history of all the western countries.

In short, it is due to social democracy, appeasement for the workers. The masses are not going to rise up and shed blood when they are comparatively comfortable, exploited yes, but comfortable.

G4b3n

10th July 2013, 15:59

I beleive the class consciousness of people today is the same as it was "in the old days". Of course it varies according to material conditions.

By "the old days" do you mean like 1 or 2 years ago?
There are vastly significant differences in class consciousness of the masses, just look at early U.S labor history more specifically organization by the IWW.

Dave B

10th July 2013, 22:02

As far as the traditional ‘political’ perspective of general leftism is concerned there is more apathy along with lack of activity and numbers etc etc compared to 20 years ago.

However as an all or nothing ‘higher phase of communism’ impossibilist.

There are positive signs.

The working class don’t believe in reforming capitalism and the reformist policies of the labour parties any more.

They also have seen, before that, that state capitalism is no better and even worse.

Perhaps these experimental ‘other alternatives’ have had to have been historically demonstrated as failures in order for the working class to reject them.

I think democratic state capitalism would have been another interesting experiment to fail but it never happened probably because of an inherent contradiction and maybe because of that, it collapsed at its conception?

‘We’ at least don’t need to spend as much time criticising such things.

Although the Bolshevik experiment has done irreparable damage to the name of communism.

And even though it is not popular amongst traditional leftists I think the first world industrial working class trade unionism is more sophisticated than they think.

They/we understand the mobility of capital and the consequences for themselves of driving wages above an international norm.

The albeit lower paid Public sector workers are perhaps one step removed from that.

I also think the working class in general now have a much better understanding of capitalism, although what to do about it is another matter.

Even the word ‘capitalism’ itself is seems more widely used in general vocabulary and the media than it was 20 years ago.

Maybe it’s my imagination

I would be interested in the results of statistical survey in the use of the word in the mainstream media then and now.

Chomsky likes doing that kind of thing.

And there was the almost mainstream 2003 ‘stop the war stuff’ and ‘no blood for oil’, being that wars are fought for profit and capitalism etc.

That was whacky stuff, for me anyway, 30 years ago.

Then, as a vaguely left orientated non middle class member of the working class I seem to remember an SPGBer ( or Socialist Standard) telling me that the Falklands war was about potential undersea oil reserves.

I thought they were mad!

I still think they were, a bit, just luckily ahead of the game, maybe?

http://rt.com/op-edge/falkland-islands-oil-argentina-101/

For me when most workers actually know what communism is then I will give up.

I do in some sense regret the demise of the traditional left in that I share their fanatical critique bourgeois capitalism and have argued alongside when faced with its apologists.

.

Fred

10th July 2013, 22:39

I don't think the decline in class consciousness has much to do with rising standards of living. I also don't think that it has anything much to do with the fSU -- except maybe coinciding somewhat with the restoration of capitalism in the fSU and East Block countries. In general, there have been a long series of defeats with few victories for the international proletariat. That is the main thing. Sure there have been some notable victories since 1917 -- The Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions. But far more critical failures than successes. I'm sure we can and will discuss endlessly the sources of these defeats. But the repeated failure to achieve social revolution in advanced capitalist countries has taken a huge toll. A successful proletarian revolution, even in a small country like Greece, would have an immense impact on the world movement and on political consciousness.

Per Levy

10th July 2013, 22:50

There are many reasons for this, sorry don't have time to list all, but an important one is there has been a tremendous rise in living standards, not just in the west, but all over the world. You got your welfare state, high pay for unskilled labour etc.

high pay for unskilled labour? where do you live? seriously, does the term "working poor" mean anything to you?

Take the Detroit autoworkers for instance, just recently a new hire was making $30 an hour. You have workers in the IT industry making six figure salaries etc.

and you have your service workers everywhere who make like 5$/€ something before taxes, but these workers might shit a bit on your argument, thats why you dont list them, right?

Point is, even workers in factories are no longer tied to the factory lifestyle. They have homes in the suburbs, doctor/lawyer friends, and are married and intertwined with the petty-bourgeois lifestyle. Lot's of class mixing.

well first of all, good luck finding a town with an actual industry still in tact, second of all yeah im pretty sure all the working poor really love to hang out with their lawyer and doctor friends who make several 100000$ a year, who all go to the same bars and clubs, oh wait no they dont.

The 'working-class' as a revolutionary category is an outlived concept. It is the leaders, armed with a genuinely socialist programme, who cause social change, not the ignorant and backward 'masses' as the entire history of the last 100 years so clearly shows.

i could quote marx who allready, back in the day, argued against attitudes like this, but why bother. anyway, i wish you and your 5 budys, excuse me, "leaders" with the über "genuinely socialist programme" a lot of luck, since you dont need the proles for a revolution and all.

a_wild_MAGIKARP

10th July 2013, 22:58

1. Not hard to imagine as current Chinese manufacturing labour costs are over $4 an hour.

2. Imperialism owes its existence to the existence of poor, backward countries.

Your first point is a lie, your second point is an absurdity.

1. K, well I don't know exactly how much they are usually paid on average, but I know there are some Chinese factory workers making $200 a month, working 6 days a week almost all day, so that's definitely less than $4 an hour. The point is simply that their wages are absolute shit.

And China was only an example, but I'm talking about all countries that make cheap stuff for the west.

2. Maybe I should have left out "imperialist"; I mostly just meant countries becoming developed and somewhat independent. But I'm not sure what you're saying is entirely true. What about WW1? Was that not a war of imperialist powers fighting against each other?

Sotionov

10th July 2013, 23:23

Because the workers in the "first world" countries are internationally-indirect exploiters of the "third world" countries, which is connected to the reforms that capitalist give to the workers to appease them. The living standard of us in the western countries could have never risen this much if the capitalists haven't outsourced their business to the developing countries, thereby increacing their profits, and enabling themselves to throws us not just bread crumbs but whole pieces of bread.

I really disliked the Occupy situations of people going to protest "the 1% has 99% percent of the money, and we the 99% have to get by with the remaining 1%", and the majority of them came to those protests gobbling on hamburgers and playing with their iPhones, whereas the working peoples of the "third world" countries literally starve to death.

We should shun reforms, go revolutionary, and support international struggle.

TheRedRose

10th July 2013, 23:34

By "the old days" do you mean like 1 or 2 years ago?

I do not know what period of history the OP is refering to.

There are vastly significant differences in class consciousness of the masses, just look at early U.S labor history more specifically organization by the IWW.

Of course, but now look at the dutch, they have always been more or less the same.

Hit The North

11th July 2013, 11:10

Because the workers in the "first world" countries are internationally-indirect exploiters of the "third world" countries, which is connected to the reforms that capitalist give to the workers to appease them.

Workers (first world, third world, whatever world) are exploited by capitalists, not by consumers, so your accusation that first world workers exploit third world labour makes no actual sense in the frame-work of Marxism. Meanwhile, the reforms that workers have won in any particular country are the result of class struggle and are financed by the public purse and not out of the profits of capitalists. So, again, your analysis makes no sense.

The living standard of us in the western countries could have never risen this much if the capitalists haven't outsourced their business to the developing countries, thereby increacing their profits, and enabling themselves to throws us not just bread crumbs but whole pieces of bread.

When capitalist out-source to developing countries, workers in the developed countries lose out through loss of jobs. The globalisation of capitalist production has led to a downward pressure on workers wages as a result of international competition. Bosses in the first world will typically exhort their workforces to accept lower wages with the threat that if they don't then the firm will move to areas where labour costs are cheaper.

We should shun reforms, go revolutionary, and support international struggle.

By "we", who are you referring to? According to your analysis the workers in the first world have an objective interest in opposing international struggle because it will threaten their privileges. So maybe you need to figure out how your analysis can avoid placing you in such a muddle.

The Feral Underclass

11th July 2013, 11:13

I think the idea that there is no alternative has been a much bigger impact than "consumer society" on consiousness. Lives improved for millions of rural people just by becoming a wage-worker and having access to more mobility and consumer goods in the early 20th, but the contradictions also produced push-back. The relative change from artisan production to industrial production had a big impact in regular worker's lives (pulp books, comics, movies, all sorts of consumer goods that seem small to us now, probably had a much bigger impression on people than us going from print books to digital or tapes to ipods) and yet, there was still fight back despite workers having more consumer goods.

The point was that capitalist ideology had succeeded as per the understanding of material/ideological dominance of the ruling class, as per Marx's views. I'm not at all convinced that the "lack of alternative" has much to do with a materialist understanding of history. Class consciousness is affected by material conditions, not by ideas. In any case, there have been plenty of "alternatives" over the last fifty years, this is precisely why the far-right has grown in popularity.

Philosophos

11th July 2013, 11:35

well I don't know in what scale this happens worlwide, but here in Greece we have organizations that are... unorganized. They make their own demos instead of going all in one ( I know that they don't agree with each other but at least go side by side not the other side of town), they don't have much appealing to the workers because of the 'weird' words they use (they tend to believe that people should go to them because they have researched communism etc etc).

Also most of the syndicats if not all have corrupted leaders that don't actually care about workers' rights but for their position and paycheck.

I believe these are some of the main reasons.

#FF0000

11th July 2013, 12:02

1. Indemonstrable? The last hundred years demonstrate quite clearly that the 'masses' are unable, due to their backwardness and ignorance, to seize power, that it is up to socialists, armed with a programme of global socialist revolution, representing the most progressive and developed layers of society, to take power.

Yo I guess you don't believe socialism's a possibility then.

Why Bolshevism succeeded and every other 'mass' movement has lead to failure and disaster.

Bolshevism lead to failure and disaster too, actually, and the idea that they took power while "the masses" were asleep is absolute nonsense. The working/peasant class in Russia was, for the most part, for more militant and radical than the parties they often supported (for example, the SRs).

CatsAttack

11th July 2013, 12:13

The proletariat has never and could never reach a high level of 'class consciousness'

That's why Lenin said the highest level of thought the proletariat could reach, if left to their own devices, is trade-unionism.

Some people just seem to fetishize and glorify the working class. Waiting for the masses to realize the benefits of socialism on their own.

"Revolutionary situations" happen all the time. The working class is ready for socialism at any minute. It is the plan, the conspiracy, the party that is missing. This is the crucial element, and not workers consciousness. The working class will not give you socialism, it is the vanguard party, armed with a programme of global socialist revolution, that will unshackle the poor ignorant masses, once and for all.

Hit The North

11th July 2013, 12:29

CatsAttack

11th July 2013, 12:41

Catsattack, instead of regurgitating the same mistakes, you should do some reading on Lenin's actual theory of the relationship between the party and the class. Then you will discover that Lenin himself spent much effort in correcting the incorrect caricature of his ideas that you present as an elitist theory.

These articles may help you out:

http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/pages/back/Wnext12/Lenin.html

http://isreview.org/issues/60/feat-leninmyth.shtml

You tell me to read Lenin then you post links to articles written by other people, other people who have pretended to have read his works and who distort his views.

You also seem to not understand the difference between propaganda and actual theory. When Lenin wrote of the great masses, the great masses who see all and understand all, liberating themselves, etc. He was employing war propaganda, and employing it wonderfully. Those who are unable to delve into theory, those who are unable to even read Lenin's works, will cite propaganda posters and distorted quotes taken out of context as 'Lenin's real views'

Some people are unable to post a single thought of their own, and they go looking for quotes. You have gone a step lower, looking for people who go looking for quotes.

Hit The North

11th July 2013, 12:50

You tell me to read Lenin then you post links to articles written by other people, other people who have pretended to have read his works and who distort his views.

You also seem to not understand the difference between propaganda and actual theory. When Lenin wrote of the great masses, the great masses who see all and understand all, liberating themselves, etc. He was employing war propaganda, and employing it wonderfully. Those who are unable to delve into theory, those who are unable to even read Lenin's works, will cite propaganda posters and distorted quotes taken out of context as 'Lenin's real views'

Some people are unable to post a single thought of their own, and they go looking for quotes. You have gone a step lower, looking for people who go looking for quotes.

So, being better than me, you will now produce those passages from Lenin where he writes off the working class as a revolutionary force and argues that the vanguard is an autonomous organisation of intellectuals.

You also seem to not understand the difference between propaganda and actual theory. What is the difference? Do you not understand the WITBD was itself a polemical intervention in political debate? In Marxism, there is no clear divide between "theory" and agitation.

Sotionov

11th July 2013, 12:53

According to your analysis the workers in the first world have an objective interest in opposing international struggle because it will threaten their privileges.
What I'm saying is that the only way we can have a high living standard in a capitalism economy is the capitalist in our country exploit also the workers of others countries, which then gives them a lot of riches of which they can afford to give a little to us, and that little is way more then the workers in the peripheral countries have. If the capitalist in our countries didn't start exploiting internationally, they would have never given us the concessions that they have. The point is to abolish the capitalists both in the center and peripheral countries- end exploitation and thereby economic inequality.

Hit The North

11th July 2013, 12:57

What I'm saying is that the only way we can have a high living standard in a capitalism economy is the capitalist in our country exploit also the workers of others countries, which then gives them a lot of riches of which they can afford to give a little to us, and that little is way more then the workers in the peripheral countries have. If the capitalist in our countries didn't start exploiting internationally, they would have never given us the concessions that they have. The point is to abolish the capitalists both in the center and peripheral countries- end exploitation and thereby economic inequality.

Yes, I understand your point. But what are these "concessions" you think have been granted to us that come directly from capitalist profits?

CatsAttack

11th July 2013, 13:12

So, being better than me, you will now produce those passages from Lenin where he writes off the working class as a revolutionary force and argues that the vanguard is an autonomous organisation of intellectuals.

What is the difference? Do you not understand the WITBD was itself a polemical intervention in political debate? In Marxism, there is no clear divide between "theory" and agitation.

You are trying to present my views as being in conflict with Lenin's, while, in essence, and form, they are one and the same. Your real issue is with Lenin, and not with me.

Also, perhaps you shouldn't fetishize a pamphlet written by a 30 year old Lenin over 110 years ago, as much as you glorify the 'working class.' Maybe try and take into account the actual history of the last 110 years as well.

Sotionov

11th July 2013, 13:15

Yes, I understand your point. But what are these "concessions" you think have been granted to us that come directly from capitalist profits?
Capitalist are the ruling class, so when the workers get pensions and other welfare and labor laws that better their conditions, they get that as a concession by the capitalist. Of course capitalist try and reduce the cost they have due to those concessions by paying them also by taxes from the workers, but it's the reforms of their system that we're getting. They would never allow such reforms if they didn't internationalized their exploitation in order to keep increasing their wealth. It is my opinion that fighting for reforms (or excepting reforms as an appeasment of revolutionary struggle) is not only negativelly bad , in the sense that it prolongs capitalism, but also positively bad, because it connected with capitalists exploiting workers internationally, and the workers in peripheral countries suffer (really suffer) so we can have iphones.

Hit The North

11th July 2013, 14:54

You are trying to present my views as being in conflict with Lenin's, while, in essence, and form, they are one and the same. Your real issue is with Lenin, and not with me.

No, I may have issues with Lenin's view on organisation but my problem here is with your cartoonish and dogmatic presentation of Lenin's position by regurgitating, in isolation and without context, one passage from WITBD.

Nevertheless, I note that you have still not told us where Lenin dismissed the international working class as the agent of revolution in favour of a top-down elite. But this will be because he never did.

Also, perhaps you shouldn't fetishize a pamphlet written by a 30 year old Lenin over 110 years ago, as much as you glorify the 'working class.' Maybe try and take into account the actual history of the last 110 years as well.
:lol: You're the one who is fetishising it by appealing to it as the final word on Lenin's view. At least the articles I linked to attempt to take a broader view of Lenin's development.

RedMaterialist

11th July 2013, 15:05

Maybe try and take into account the actual history of the last 110 years as well.

Last 110 years:

1. Russian revolution succeeded
2. German, Hungarian, failed
3. Spanish revolution, succeeded, then overthrown
4. Fascist attempt to destroy Soviet Union defeated
5. Chinese revolution succeeded
6. Cuban rev succeeded
7. Vietnamese rev succeeded
8. Zimbabwe
9. Angola
10. South Africa
11. Chile, failed
12. Venezuela
13. Iran, Philipines
14. etc.

There have been several successful revolutions of the masses in the last 110 yrs, there have also been several failures. No one ever claimed the development of the consciousness of the masses of people would be anything but uneven, sporadic, sometimes going forward then backward. Most of the revolutions have been violent, but a few have been "velvet," non-violent.

The Egyptian masses certainly are undergoing a consciousness development. (they used to call it consciousnesss raising, back in the 60s)

The European and North American masses are on the verge of some kind of mass "event" if the capitalist class cannot figure out how to keep capitalism going without reducing the 99.9% to complete poverty, or, for that matter, without destroying the planet. I would say a Marxist analysis shows that capitalism will continue to experience crises; it hasn't even emerged from the last one. This entire house of cards is bound to collapse.

I think you should not declare an end to history just yet.

Hit The North

11th July 2013, 16:45

Capitalist are the ruling class, so when the workers get pensions and other welfare and labor laws that better their conditions, they get that as a concession by the capitalist.

Concessions are won from the ruling class through the pressure of the class struggle. Or do you think that workers everywhere are always weak and powerless and that, therefore, the advance of one national class of workers can only be achieved through the ruthless exploitation of a different national class of workers? Do you think that the workers of the developed world create no value through their labour? If so, then why do corporations bother producing anything in the heartlands of global capitalism? What would give the workers of developed nations any leverage?

Isn't it nearer the truth to see the gains of workers in the developed nations as a result of their bargaining power within their national and the international economy?

Of course capitalist try and reduce the cost they have due to those concessions by paying them also by taxes from the workers, but it's the reforms of their system that we're getting.Yes, capitalist are all the time finding ways of shifting the burden onto the working class by cutting benefits, slashing services, and avoiding their fair share of tax. How successful they are in doing this depends on class struggle and how far workers are able to resist it. It is not consequent on the ability of international capital to ratchet-up the rate of exploitation of third world workers in order to pay off first world workers. Why would they voluntarily give their money away when they can find other means of making the working class pay for it?

Let's be clear, the standard of living enjoyed by the first world proletariat has been in decline over the last forty years as a proportion of the social wealth, and where it has been given the illusion of advance this has been fuelled by cheap credit not over-generous wages plucked out of the super-profits of capital and handed down as a bribe.

They would never allow such reforms if they didn't internationalized their exploitation in order to keep increasing their wealth.This is true but it is also a tautology, given that capitalism is, by its nature, an international system and is compelled to increase its profitability in order to survive at all. But to say the ruling class would "not allow it" again gives the impression that you think workers are powerless saps dependent on the largesse of their compassionate masters.

It is my opinion that fighting for reforms (or excepting reforms as an appeasment of revolutionary struggle) is not only negativelly bad , in the sense that it prolongs capitalism, but also positively bad, because it connected with capitalists exploiting workers internationally, and the workers in peripheral countries suffer (really suffer) so we can have iphones.
Well, you present a logical but abstract position here. It is not a matter of "revolutionary theory" as to whether workers fight for their existential needs - they are forced to by the grinding logic of capital. Their ability to do so should not be discarded as a hindrance, because a working class that calls and fights for reforms to alleviate its condition is better than one that passively takes it up the arse, so to speak.

Isn't it the point that the only way workers in developing nations will improve their position is by struggling against their own conditions? Fighting for better social conditions? Fighting for higher wages? If that makes iphones too expensive to in Western markets that is a problem for Apple (who I could not give two fucks about) not a problem for people who have spent millennia proving that they can get by without a smart phone.

Jimmie Higgins

11th July 2013, 18:44

The point was that capitalist ideology had succeeded as per the understanding of material/ideological dominance of the ruling class, as per Marx's views.Of course, that's what this thread is about, I just don't think that this was based on increase in consumer goods. You can have uprisings in places that have stagnated like Greece or in places that have seen massive booms and increased consumer-options like in Turkey or Brazil.

I'm not at all convinced that the "lack of alternative" has much to do with a materialist understanding of history. Class consciousness is affected by material conditions, not by ideas.We do have "alternative ideas" but we don't have a "viable alternative" to strategies and organization tied to capitalism and the neoliberal project specifically. Objectivly atomization and competition have increased and subjectivly class organization (even reformist) has either been attacked or co-opted.

Historically, it seems to me that increasing mobility (housing, access to consumer goods) impacts consciousness, but in a contested way that plays out based on other material factors.

Anecdotally, it seems that if you go to your work where you are interacting as an individual to pay for your personal debt and rent and whatnot and are rewarded and punished induvidually by the bosses, then capitalist ideology seems like "common sense": you can compete, acquire special training, find another job, or just suck it up. But if you go to work and there's a wildcat or rank and file organizing or even a not completely incompetent trade union, then more collective and class-based alternatives are possible; class consciousness could begin to be a wide-spread thing.

Defeating even basic class defense, or this defense being exposed as impotent - or both at the same time - closes the door on viable alternatives and allows capitalist hegemony plenty of breathing room. (Luckilly or unluckilly the capitalists are restless and have to constantly go in and out, so there are lots of other chances of the door opening in unexpected ways, if only for a moment. I'm going to stop this analogy right here before I go on about constructing a class wedge to prop the door open.)

The Feral Underclass

11th July 2013, 19:45

Of course, that's what this thread is about, I just don't think that this was based on increase in consumer goods.

But I'm not really saying it is based on an increase of consumer goods, I am saying that consumerism, as capitalist ideology, has entrenched ruling class ideas about the virtues of capitalist material production and domination. I don't know how it is in the US, but you are more likely to find people queueing up for a new IPhone than you are to save someone from being made homeless, or lose their jobs etc.

Jimmie Higgins

11th July 2013, 21:09

But I'm not really saying it is based on an increase of consumer goods, I am saying that consumerism, as capitalist ideology, has entrenched ruling class ideas about the virtues of capitalist material production and domination. I don't know how it is in the US, but you are more likely to find people queueing up for a new IPhone than you are to save someone from being made homeless, or lose their jobs etc.

Ok, but that's kind of like arguing that capitalist ideology has made capitalist ideology dominant. Capitalist ideology always has a pull because they have the institutions and the money and the PR, but also just because it's their game and so their way of seeing the game makes a certain kind of sense on the surface even for workers. Work hard, compete, go to school, try to achieve individual mobility makes a kind of sense because by default we have to do some of these things as workers -- when there isn't a practical alternative to dealing with capitalism, even a flawed or reformist half-one.

In the US lots of people want ipods and ipads and entertainment and distractions of all kinds. Why the hell not. But why do they worship Steve Jobs and not the Chinese workers? Why do they not see that picket-lines are where they should queue up if they actually want to be able to get things like iphones? I think business-unionism on the one hand along with repression and changes in capitalism that have weakened class strategies and networks are a big part of that.

But is the media hype about consumerism really the full picture?
http://www.capmac.org/iphonesig/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/apple-catalan.pnghttp://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/05/18/ipad-apple-store-sf-12_540x360.jpg
and
http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/images/kfsn/cms_exf_2007/_video_wn_images/8615981_600x338.jpg
http://thisgotmyattention.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/michigan-riot.jpg?w=316
People in Atlanta in lines for the housing assistance waitlist:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NB2lAI4RIvw/TGRZb2T_yKI/AAAAAAAABBA/spyCkqP8sxM/s1600/section8_647971c.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb214/traditional1/thefuture.jpg
^people wait in line for crappy but scarce public housing... not because they are convinced of bourgeois ideology in a positive sense, but because they feel there is no alternative and practically there is none that's readily apparent.

VDS

11th July 2013, 21:50

I think try and make too much of this. It's simple. It's because there's more distractions, it's because capitalism has succeeded in making people believe that those who work harder are the ones who get paid more. It's because those same capitalists own the TV Networks and the News corporations.

It's because they give us "just enough" to not think about it. You go to work, and you focus on not getting fired, you focus on getting paid more, not on how you're being screwed (and if you DO feel like you're being screwed, well, all you do is complain about it since you're too afraid of losing your job). Then you leave work and you pay bills and you save up for a vacation and you call that being happy. 1 week out of the year where aren't a slave, and you call it the american dream.

The media has a hand in it obviously, as does WHERE you live. Well off people live around other well off people, and the media is there to remind them that they're because of what they did only, and poor people are where they are for similar reasons.

I would go on, but I myself need to go to work right now and bust my ass for a paycheck that makes me want to almost choke MYSELF at the end of the week.

The Feral Underclass

12th July 2013, 11:49

Ok, but that's kind of like arguing that capitalist ideology has made capitalist ideology dominant.

Capitalist ideology and capitalist production/domination are two different things.

Capitalist ideology always has a pull because they have the institutions and the money and the PR, but also just because it's their game and so their way of seeing the game makes a certain kind of sense on the surface even for workers. Work hard, compete, go to school, try to achieve individual mobility makes a kind of sense because by default we have to do some of these things as workers -- when there isn't a practical alternative to dealing with capitalism, even a flawed or reformist half-one.

In the US lots of people want ipods and ipads and entertainment and distractions of all kinds. Why the hell not. But why do they worship Steve Jobs and not the Chinese workers? Why do they not see that picket-lines are where they should queue up if they actually want to be able to get things like iphones? I think business-unionism on the one hand along with repression and changes in capitalism that have weakened class strategies and networks are a big part of that.

Yes, the failures and weakening of the left will have an effect on the left's ability to function, especially if the left is not re-evaluating the changes in class composition and learning lessons from their failures -- something the left consistently fails to do.

However, I do not see how this relates specifically to why the working class are not class conscious now. Class consciousness doesn't come about by having an organised left. For me, that view is a substitutionist one.

But is the media hype about consumerism really the full picture?

Full picture of what?

^people wait in line for crappy but scarce public housing... not because they are convinced of bourgeois ideology in a positive sense, but because they feel there is no alternative and practically there is none that's readily apparent.

I don't know how the word "positive" got slipped into this debate, first of all. Secondly, as I said, I do not accept this idealist view of class consciousness. Even if a practical alternative were readily available, it wouldn't mean the proletariat will become class conscious.

To repeat myself, class consciousness comes about through the struggles of the proletariat. It is only in struggle against material forces that a practical alternative can be formed, not the other way around.

Jimmie Higgins

12th July 2013, 18:15

Yes, the failures and weakening of the left will have an effect on the left's ability to function, especially if the left is not re-evaluating the changes in class composition and learning lessons from their failures -- something the left consistently fails to do.

However, I do not see how this relates specifically to why the working class are not class conscious now. Class consciousness doesn't come about by having an organised left. For me, that view is a substitution one.You seem to think that when I'm speaking about viable alternatives to accepting a capitalist worldview, that I mean Marxist parties. I'm talking about any viable independent alternative to what is offered by capitalism I mean examples and knowledge of collective alternatives, class alternatives. The old structures that came out of this in the past "the left" have been marginalized, co-opted, or destroyed and because of business-unionism and repression and many other factors, rank and file traditions and practice have largely been lost - at least in the US.

Full picture of what?I don't think consumerism gives a full picture for why working class consciousness is so low now. Maybe I don't know what you mean by consumerism.

I don't know how the word "positive" got slipped into this debate, first of all. As I understood it, you were saying that class consiousness was low because of consumerism, so I assume that if people are won to capitalist views and hegemony due to consumerism, then it's their access to consumer goods - or the possibility of access to it - that has generalized this view for most workers. I can't see how it would convince them in a negative sense, access to consumer goods makes workers dispair that they have no choice but capitalism?

Secondly, as I said, I do not accept this idealist view of class consciousness.How is this idealist? No real living experience of alternative ways to deal with capitalism other than as an individual has a dampening impact on people; if people are convinced that you can't strike or struggle or fight, but have to make some kind of way, then capitalist views hold a certain "common sense" resonance.

Even if a practical alternative were readily available, it wouldn't mean the proletariat will become class conscious.Yes, good point, but I think a movement, a generalization of consciousness coming out of struggle, has the potential to make at least a basic class-understanding much more widespread, even to a degree among other classes for good and bad.

To repeat myself, class consciousness comes about through the struggles of the proletariat. It is only in struggle against material forces that a practical alternative can be formed, not the other way around.I went back and I honestly can't find where you first made this argument because, again, it seemed like you were saying that consumerism was the reason there was low class consciousness. But if you're saying that class consciousness comes through struggle, then there really isn't much of an argument here at all, I guess a misunderstanding on my part of what you were going for.

By practical alternatives, that is exactly what I meant: actual examples and experiences in struggle, an alternative to just accepting capitalism as it is presented to us: a collection of competing induviduals. Practices and institutions that allowed for or even facilitated some level of resistance, from reformist or even accidental, to more militant traditions and organizations have been broken, swept aside, or incorporated in the neoliberal era. It just means to me that these sorts of practices need to find new roots, new resistance needs to generalize, and class consciousness can be rebuilt. Some of that will happen because of what movements can respond subjectively to things, but larger and more fundamental changes - crisis and so on - create the openings and terms for struggle.